“Jeff Johnston’s Mission to Improve Mental Health in Youth with ‘Brightn’ – A New Mental Wellness App”

[00:00:05] Jake White: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Party Talk podcast, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. I’m so excited to introduce to you today, Jeffrey Johnston, this guy is on a quest to improve mental health in young adults and youth all across the country, he is debuting an phenomenal product, I’ve been hearing about it from people around him, which just tells me this has got to be something good. And today you’re gonna get a sneak peek into “Brightn” his new mental health wellness app, and what he’s trying to do across the country. So enjoy this episode of the Party Talk podcast. What’s the latest happenings?

[00:00:47] Jeff Johnston: Same stuff just at a soft launch the app and feedbacks been good. I think last time I saw were in nine countries, which sometimes that’s like two downloads in a country and accounts as we’re getting good feedback. And just today I got an email from an organization called “Drug free Clubs of America.” And they’re in I don’t know, lots and lots of high schools, maybe in the hundreds, where their program is to talk to kids about being part of this drug free movement. And to get in it, you have to submit to a drug test. And Angie Ferguson’s her name. And so she just sent me this long email saying, met with our team, they’re really excited to talk about possibly having “Brightn” involved in our project, because really “Brightn” is like a toolbox. We’re not providing really necessarily like a solution. But we’re getting kids the ability to set up a plan, they can organize their mental wellness in a plan structure, kind of like we do financial plans, and exercise plans, and no one’s ever really looked at mental wellness as a planning process, a more looked at it as a diagnosis or a label, or something that we need to take this disorder and remove it from you because it’s evil and that’s all negative. And kids look at all these things as these problems with them and said, if someone’s saying, now I had a kid the other day say to me, I am what’d she say, I am depressed. And I said, “No, as a boy, I am depressed.” I said, “No, you’re John. You’re not. You’re not. You believe you’re depressed, you will become depressed, you’re John, you have sadness, and you have things going in your life”. You’re 15, let’s don’t put this label on your forehead, and then the rest of your life. We’re trying to kill this demon with meds, psychiatry, whatever we need to do.

[00:03:00] Jake White: Your story you just told it, that’s just what it is, is, every student has a body and a brain. They’re forming their identity. Earlier that they believe that they have some sort of debilitated, debilitation that takes away who they are, where they want to be. And we can label it and say, “Now, here’s your path, it’s been set for you, because we put this label on you.” You’re empowering them to say, no, that’s not who you are of challenges, we all have different things that will challenge us, within our brains and our bodies. And it’s up to us to decide what we want to do with it. And your sounds like you’re helping build a plan so that we can overcome any of those challenges.

[00:03:44] Jeff Johnston: I’ve always been frustrated with you take a word like depression, and you take a word like sadness. And where does that line cross? When do you become? You’re not sad anymore, but you’re depressed. And when does depression become sadness, and that is the subjectivity with things like the DSM where just by the marking a box on a few questions, you can be labeled depressed when reality, how you answered that question yesterday is different than you answered it today, because maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with you. And now you’re a little sadder than you were had you answered this a week ago. So this whole process and the whole system that we have for grading kids, mental wellness is just broken. I guess here’s what I would say, Jake. I would concede that all this is fine if the evidence showed that it was working. And I would say, I have no background in psychiatry or I’m not a doctor. I’m just a dad from Iowa. And it’s great to see suicide ideation drop. It’s great to see kids or their happiness at school has gone up, it’s great to see overdose deaths drop. But the problem is it’s not, even adults, almost every statistic, even obesity, things that that can create mental health challenges are higher, and so what’s our choice? We can just continue prescribing meds and making more labels and telling more kids, if they don’t take this pill, there’ll be a werewolf at midnight and enrich Big Pharma or create this system where we’re not called codependent done on these companies and these organizations. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but at some point someone’s going to draw a line in the sand. I’m tired of people dying, Jake, I’m tired of people being unhappy. I’m tired of people given up in a time when humanity has the most abundance they’ve ever had, we are no question the most miserable we’ve ever been.

[00:05:59] Jake White: And I think you got it is there’s this codependency that you can see it when you watch culture, watch TV, there’s a product for everything, every feeling you have, or you want to have, there’s nothing that is to be sold. And we make a lot of our decisions based on economics. So, of course, what I love about what we’re doing is saying, “You are enough, you are sufficient. You need to put in the work where you are and that can lead to an amazing life. You don’t need the extra medicine, or whatever it is.” Again, I’m not going to argue with a doctor with a PhD in a certain topic if it’s working. But we’ve all seen if it’s working, we’ve also seen the opioid epidemic, though, prescribe that and look what happened as well.

[00:06:50] Jeff Johnston: And then they blame them were lied to. And they’re just not really taking accountability that maybe they were lied to, but it’s their job to vet that, isn’t their job to dig deeper and, or is their job just to sell car parts, or just try to, it’s a crappy car, but they’re just pushing parts. And that’s in a way, I watched the movie dope sick, and everyone kind of jumped in defend the doctor and my dad’s a doctor. So I’m not trying to throw anybody under the bus. But we can point to figure the finger at Purdue pharmaceuticals and Big Pharma. And the doctor seemed to be deflecting a lot of didn’t tell us oxy was very addictive, highly addictive, and maybe they didn’t but you’re also a doctor, and you’re also highly intelligent in these areas, or at least your education or that that thing on your wall that says you’re a PhD claims that you are. Do we blame the kids? Do we blame the parents? I think there’s a level of culpability all the way all the way around. If you watch that movie, “Dope Sick”, and now the new one painkiller on Netflix, which I haven’t seen yet, I don’t think I need to, because Dope Sick was fine for me. And my story, maybe your followers don’t know it. But I feel I have a dog in the hunt, literally. And these things very much frustrate me. And I think the more I grow my advocacy, I’m trying to stay away from being an activist. Because activism can be negative, whereas advocacy is positive. So but I find myself being pulled into that area where I don’t want to go in that’s being that angry fentanyl dad or that ANGRY DAD out there. I don’t want to be that I want to change the world with love and abundance. And that’s really what our app is all about. And that’s why I committed to Gen-Z and trying to find the best people out there. And you’re one of them. I love what you’re doing. You and I just met. I don’t know a lot about what you do. But what I have learned is impressive, and so needed. And it sounds like it’s very refreshing. What you’re doing.

[00:08:56] Jake White: Thank you, Jeff. And I do want to kind of unpack everything you’re doing because we just went off to the races, we started this thing.

[00:09:05] Jeff Johnston: As attention deficit, its fun. Its saggy strap on and just hold on, you don’t know where it’s gonna go.

“The Genesis of ‘Brightn’ – A Mental Wellness App Pioneered”

[00:09:14] Jake White: Let’s do this. I would love to start with just to share all the excitement about “Brightn”. And that would love to end with just your heart behind all of this. As far as if we have a map of where we want to go throughout today’s interview. Can you share, what is “Brightn” and why do we need it?

[00:09:37] Jeff Johnston: Well, in order to answer that question, I do probably have to reverse it. And I have to tell a bit about my background first and then I’ll get into the motivation but I live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’m 57 years old. For 34 years, I ran an investment company called premier investments of Iowa. That’s what I thought my calling was in life was to help people open up IRA’s and I liked it. I liked talking about money it was, I got into the behavioral economics of people’s relationships with money that was very fun to me. It wasn’t the quantitative side of my job, it was the qualitative side. The human element of what can money do to you from an altruistic standpoint, from a charitable standpoint from providing you more time in your life with people you care about? So that was all gone great. I was married 21 years, my wife Prudence make three boys. As you know October 4th 2016, everything changed. Our oldest son Seth died from a fentanyl poisoning at the age of 23, which was the end of a long journey of addiction. Now, you may say, 23, how long was this while he started at 16, if I made a mistake on this whole thing, Jake, it’s I allowed a doctor to give my son Adderall for attention deficit, which now in hindsight, I had an opportunity there as a dad to embrace in touch and deficit, like my dad did me as a superpower as a gift, not a curse, not a punishment that needs to be an exorcism like a demon inside of me. And that’s how we look at it now. And I don’t even allow people around me to use the last “D”, we just call attention deficit, we stop right there. Why do we have to call it a disorder? What benefit to societies other than being able to file an insurance claim? What is that? What is the benefit of calling your inability to sit still looking out the window or fidgeting? How these are served us very well through evolution for many years, when we had to survive from lions and tigers, and warring tribes? And now, we don’t need these things anymore. I disagree with that. I really do. I think attention deficit can be one of the greatest gifts a child can have. Certainly, there’s a spectrum. Now, if you’re at 10, and you’re just all over the place, I’m not talking about that person. I’m talking about the ones that are four or five, six, and sevens, which is probably you, me, and everybody that’s listening to your show, the normal attention deficit kids that don’t need to be on meds, maybe their sugar needs to be lowered and things like that. But anyway, so Seth started abusing Adderall, selling it, taking it, withdrawing off of it, did the normal things going through adolescence, alcohol, marijuana. Now then it was a drunk driving or two, that it was jail that it was breaking and entering. Then it was cocaine, and it was prison. And then it was heroin, and then fentanyl and death from 16 to 23. I witnessed this as an alcoholic myself, Jake. And you think that would be enough to write the ship, but it wasn’t. And for about a month, or I’m sorry, for a year and a half after Seth died, my wife and I, our drinking got worse. And then finally, in 2021, June 29th, the day after our youngest son’s 18th birthday, my wife of 21 years, 46 years old, found dead alcohol abuse took her life. But we know it wasn’t alcohol, it was grief. It was the pain of bearing Seth and I got him both here over my shoulder to remind me how important life is and why I’m grateful for what I have not to remind me of the pain. I don’t have pain. The pain is morphed. It’s inspiration. Now even when I cry, it’s just not as heavy as it was and it’s over quicker. But coming up on year seven that we lost Seth and so. So anyway, what happened was that I just got catapulted into this mental health advocacy space. I had no interest in any of this until our son died. And I thought the best way to find purpose in your life is to find something personal, and immerse yourself with passion. That’s what I did. And all this now I have a book, I do a podcast called “The Living Undeterred” podcast. I met great people that have a similar objective, and that’s to help kids improve their mental wellness. And the beauty of it is all doing it in so many different ways. I like what you’re doing, and we’re doing and so many other advocates that you meet or I meet every day, it’s quite beautiful. What can come out of the abyss?

[00:14:31] Jake White: And your story, it was substance use. Like that was thing from the outside looking in. People would say, “Well, Jeff, you will become a great advocate to help other people not go down the same path.” And what I love is that you’ve chosen mental health because you see the root,

[00:14:55] Jeff Johnston: Well said. I compare mental health to a wheel and substance abuse as a spoke, drug abuse is a spoke, sex abuse, whatever you want to put in there gambling, food addiction, those are spokes on the wheel. So I didn’t want to be an angry fentanyl dad and just spend my time trying to eradicate fentanyl. When I knew that Seth probably wouldn’t have went down these roads in the first place. Had he not been had he been diagnosed correctly or more accurately for him on a mental health perspective?

[00:15:30] Jake White: And then that kind of leads us, do you see “Brightn”, and I’d love to share, like three to share it with what it is and what it is that something that you feel, what I’m doing now is going to help save lives. Because we can help have a tool, at least one tool that’s positive on someone’s phone, that can save their life instead of the ones that add a bunch of stress, social media sites and comparison and whatever else we might have on there?

[00:16:03] Jeff Johnston: So where the idea came from is last summer when I went around the United States and our RV decided to buy an RV and do the living undeterred US tour, which a matter of fact, you’ll be coming to our stop in Phoenix at Alice Cooper’s teen Rock Center. I met Alice in Vegas, him and Cheryl and I told him my story. And we hugged and cried, and he said, “You can bring your RV out and we’ll support you.” He wasn’t there last year, but he was there in spirit for sure. And the people that were great, and so the tour, I got out the field. I rolled up the sleeves, I met people, I got to have intimate conversations, this is great, but when I actually get to see you and hug you, that’ll be a whole different connection. And we lost that with COVID. And we lost that with a lot of things. So I just felt I need to get out on the road, I need to go shake hands and I did that. And from that I planted all the seeds around the country, that now with the next project that I have in mind with this Gen-Z mental wellness out, I’m going back now and kind of harvesting the seeds, kind of picking the people that really are aligned with what I’m trying to do and what. So the idea came about one night in the RV, I probably was frustrated because there was lots of nights in the tour. I didn’t feel like I was doing enough. I think the day I die, I’m going to feel like I didn’t do enough. That’s just something that’s in me. I’m never gonna be satisfied which is good and bad. It is on its own way. I don’t I have that feeling too, like never enough to do enough. Now, I could probably save every kid in the world. I wouldn’t feel like it’s enough. So I was sitting around one night thinking, what’s next? What can I do next? And I thought I think I listened to a podcast. I think it was Tim Ferriss or somebody I listened to he was talking about midlife. I’m 57. So it’s write down the three things that you would not do? Well, fly a plane, that’s one. Start up a tech company. And then I stopped. I didn’t need to go any further. Because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start up a tech company. No one on the planet. Jeff Johnston, what co-founder of a tech startup company. The guy can’t even program his VCR. I’m like, there’s a lot of truth to that. But I just figured out man, I gotta keep learning I gotta keep this this thing from aging. I just I’ll never retire and sit on a beach and sip my dough. I don’t drink but I’ll never retire. I just I don’t have any desire yet to do that. Maybe down the road. I will. So I came up with this idea, what was I good at for 34 years. I was good at financial advising. I was good at helping people put together their finances and see a future. I could plant these intangible things in their mind. It’s one thing to sell a house or a car when it’s right there. It sells itself. But when you’re selling retirement, what does that look like? You get you got to put something that’s intangible in someone’s mind and then show them what it looks like 30 years down the road. It’s very hard to do, but became very good at it. And I thought, isn’t mental health kind of that way? How do you sell mental health, mental wellness to a 17 year old when they can’t look at it, feel it, touch it. And I said, maybe they can, put it on the phone. Make an app. So I started researching it, and hired a company out of Washington DC called “Three Advance”. I spent a lot of money. I’ve done well financially. I can just take it every day and kind of look at how well I did and buy a bigger car and a faster but I was gonna say bigger car faster house, but that would make any sense. Well, it’s been a long day. That was your house faster car. And I thought, I’m just gonna take the success. I’ve had in the investment In business I’m gonna develop. And this is, what are my elevator pitches? So “Brightn” is the nation’s first one page mental wellness plan taking three areas of optimal mental wellness, and that’s health, wealth and purpose. So I tried to think if I could be the creator for a day, that could create the perfect Gen-Z, and Gen-Z is 14 to 26 which is your market basically, you create the perfect kid, young adult, what would it be? Well, perfect health, mind, body and soul. I would also give them meaning and purpose. So they have a sense of connection to the universe. Now, it could be religion or not, it doesn’t matter but meaning and purpose. What’s the third thing? And I struggled with it, and then just kind of dawned on me, you’re a financial guy. And that came across a statistic that just cemented it. For me. The number one stressor for older Gen-Z was financial insecurity. That was it. That was my idea for the app health, wealth and purpose. So that how do I put this into an app, put it on the phone, kids then can download it. And then they could start to engage, build their own mental wellness plan, make it a little bit gamified, and a little bit fun. And I had everybody telling me, it’s not going to work out. Everybody told me I know, kids are on TikTok, and I think you’re selling these kids short. These kids are amazing. They want a better life. They’re mad that we’ve destroyed the oceans. And we’ve caused global changes either true or not. That’s their perception. Perception becomes reality over time. So that was my driving force. And then really, the thing that really put me over the edge was the name “Brightn”. Our tagline is, “Let’s Brightn young minds, let’s Brightn young lives”. And when Seth died, his daughter was born three weeks later, and her name is Bon. And so Bon now has a special meaning for people looking at the app. They see they probably think, “Oh, that’s cool name.” But to me, it’s just more than that. It’s the legacy. Because someday my granddaughter is going to ask about dad. And I want her to know, Seth “Brightn” my life.

“Brightn: The Innovative App Revolutionizing Gen-Z Mental Wellness”

[00:22:33] Jake White: So you’ve put in basically everything, everything from your past, not even just your experiences and your relationships with your kids and your wife they’ve passed on, that your legacy is building this, this app, and you didn’t just put your emotion to it. You spent a lot of money developed? I did and facing a lot of rejection. And you’ve got people piloting this while in schools. And are people downloading it individually on their phones, like how are they can?

[00:23:12] Jeff Johnston: They can actually download it now. So I’ll provide you with the link. And you can go to the app store and just put in I think you have to put in “Brightn Wellness”, because we’re so new, that it doesn’t pull up “Brightn”. But what helps us a lot if any of your listeners want to download it, they get one free year. So there’s no cost for a year. What helps us a lot is if you can go in and give it obviously a five star rating if you think it’s good. And then make some comments. Because the more you do that, that’s kind of how the algorithm works. And the more we can get kids to embrace this as an opportunity. And like I said, I’m betting the future on this generation, I am that confident that they can write this ship. The last thing kids need today is to fill out an assessment and be told how screwed up they are. And net for 100 bucks, we have a solution to solve their problem. Bon is not about diagnosis and labels and treatment. We’re about prevention. We’re about love and abundance. We’re about opportunities, we’re about connection. I’m not a clinician, I didn’t want to design an app that would tell kids all their problems. They already know that. Jake, they don’t know the names. But they know they have they know they’re not sleeping well. They know they have their stomach hurts. They know they have problems. They don’t need us to tell them that what they need a solutions.

[00:24:42] Jake White: Like you said to they need to be empowered to know that they are the solution because so I do this at the beginning.

[00:24:51] Jeff Johnston: I really liked that they are the solution and I had big pharma.

[00:24:57] Jake White: This is what I see Jeff when I go into a school is, I never just dive into education on prevention or substance use. Because why does this matter? And what I see is when I asked students at the beginning, what do you want out of life? Imagine you’re 5-10 years older than you are right now, what are the things that you want to happen to you? So they’ll tell me all these things, and I’m just blown away, because they’re saying things I want to help address homelessness and give more people homes, or I want to increase mental wellness in our country, or I want to make the world a more accepting place. So a lot of times, it’s not like, I want a bunch of money, or I want this. They’re out there doing what you said, like they want to change the world for the better. And what’s cool about our programs is we’re saying, we don’t have the solution for you, we’re going to help you become the best version of yourself, so that you can actually achieve that goal. Because prevention is right. It’s not about not doing something. It’s about being your best self. So you can do something.

[00:26:10] Jeff Johnston: Avoidance is a fear and scarcity issue. If you’re focusing on just avoiding things your whole life, you’re not really growing. You’re just damage control all constantly. It’s like when I used to play golf at a level where I was competitive. I played two years of college golf, but I got recruited for basketball, I just went off for golf didn’t have no players. But I used to think to myself good scores are about voiding the really bad holes. But what I ended up doing is every shot I was scared every shot, I was afraid out of bounds. I was afraid to miss that putt. And I figured out after listening to some mental coaches that had to change that mindset, you can’t live in a fear and scarcity world and grow. So I was holding back my golf game. And I tried to talk to my son about this, he ended up playing college golf itself, Dakota, is go play free love and abundance, get the ball out of balance. I’m not telling you to laugh and smile. But don’t be afraid every time you hit that shot worrying about your bad shots. That’s just not how you want to be you’re driven by your life is through fear.

[00:27:25] Jake White: That actually makes a ton of sense. And I think a lot of our work that we see around the country is, don’t do this. Don’t do that. But then you focus on what you don’t want, instead of like you said, we’ll focus what you do want. How do I get those? That’s what I’m focused on. It’s positive.

[00:27:46] Jeff Johnston: I’m moving right. I’m very optimistic. That Gen-Z, mental wellness is where I need to be. And I think that generation is really set to do some big things for humanity. I really do. I’m real proud of Gen-Z.

[00:28:05] Jake White: That’s cool. Can you share more about how we can use it and check it out? So it’s spelled different.

[00:28:12] Jeff Johnston: It’s “B-R-I-G-H-T-N” what we wanted to do is I didn’t want to be clinical. That’s while I want to avoid that. And I know that some investors have not been interested in us once they found out that we’re not clinical, because they want to have all the evidence based stuff. And we built it with the clinicians to help us build it. We just don’t show that to the kids. Kids don’t want to fill out a 60 questionnaire assessment telling him how screwed up they are. So ours is nine. We have three questions in each area. Our onboarding, simple questions. Do you eat healthy? Do you exercise? Do you smoke? Do you have toxic relationships? And it’s for answers. So we give them we give them different ranges? And then once they answer those questions, artificial intelligence, then we’ll look at their answers. We have AI and ChatGPT in our app. And we have like 200 opportunities that are embedded in the in the app. So based on how you answer your questions, we will send you opportunities that you can start implementing to build your plan. So you don’t have to go do it yourself. So we’ll send you the links. Now, this is our MVP version. I will promise you in a year or two, “Brightn” will look completely different. Once we get investors once we get more money coming in. We’ll be able to do more things right now. We’re pre seed. So we want to raise $1.8 million. That’s our pre seed raise. Once we complete that round, and we move on to “Series A”, then we can start doing more things that are more interactive with the kids but for the time being. We wanted to send them opportunities based on how they answer the questions. And then we recommend throughout “Push Notifications” for them to retake the quiz. Because if you took an assessment today, and then two weeks down the road, take the assessment again. At that age, you’re gonna have a lot of things happen in those two weeks that could change your answers, good and bad. And so we want to suggest the algorithm wants to get to know you well. So we recommend kids retake the quiz pretty frequently, we remind them each day, or I’m not sure how the frequency but we remind them to take the quiz so they can send them new opportunities. So it is interactive. It’s non-threatening, it’s non-judgmental, we’re not going to tell you have attention deficit, we’re not going to tell you you’re depressed. We have an SOS tab, you click on that it takes you to all the national hotlines throughout the United States. Ultimately, we want to have all of our collaborators, that could be your organization, all the people that we work with that, or working with kids, we want to have that as a resource tab, where if kids are in a situation where they want to have a sober party, let’s say, and they don’t know where to go, maybe your organization can collaborate with us some capacity. And we can provide that in our app for our users to reach out to. So I think the only thing that limits “Brightn” is our creativity is our mind is our inability to, to work with people. If you want to change the world, you’re going to have to run with people who want to change the world.

[00:31:34] Jake White: Absolutely. I love this. I’m going to put this up if you’re watching on YouTube, there it is. It’s so impressive. So I’m downloading it. And I would encourage you, if you’re in school, if you’re principal, school counselors, social worker, maybe you’re in a Drug Prevention Coalition. Just download it, check it out, I really gonna be talking about right here.

[00:31:56] Jeff Johnston: It’s simple, Jake. We just wanted to keep it simple. And with kids, they have short attention spans. And so it was really important for us to make it where, and I bumped heads with an investor the other day, because I was pitching “Brightn”. And he’s like, “How are you going to engage? How are you going to keep the kids on the app? , what’s your strategy to engage them? , keep them on the app?” And I’m thinking to myself, “Man, you don’t have kids?” Because if you did, you wouldn’t ask that question. You’d be more concerned about their mental wellness. We don’t want to addict kids on “Brightn” years. But here’s my thing to you. It’s not your time on “Brightn”. It’s your timing of “Brightn” during the day, the first 30 minutes first 15 minutes first 10 minutes key. That’s huge. Over lunch hour during the school day, when you have free time. After you get home from school, for you go to bed after dinner. So we want kids selective times during the day just for your attention for that short, maybe it’s five minutes, maybe it’s 10. We’re not telling kids to replace TikTok, that’s a fool’s proposition. I’m not going to come to the market with an app telling parents we’re going to get them off social media. We’re not a social media app.

[00:33:13] Jake White: No, it’s the purpose. The purpose is to improve mental wellness. That’s it and being on the app is for learning so that they can be well throughout the day.

[00:33:22] Jeff Johnston: And if they want to stay on the app, I think as we get investors and we build this out, we’ll have more content, and maybe kids will stay on it for 2, 3, 4 hours in a day. As long as they’re filling out the surveys, and we’re getting data that it’s improving their mental wellness, then what parents could have a problem with that?

[00:33:42] Jake White: Why in your imagination in the next few years or whatever? Is it something where I’m having a tough day? I hopped out. There’s different coping.

[00:33:55] Jeff Johnston: We have a few things on the app, we have a thing called the “Brightn Wall”, where we’re allowing kids to submit a picture will vet the person make sure the legitimate or they don’t want a photo of themselves, they can use one of our avatars will provide. And they can give a paragraph of why they started “Brightn” and how they benefited. And right now we have six kids on the app. And I like to get 600 and then what happens is over lunch hour, you just got bullied and you feel down you can jump on the “Brightn” wall. And you can see all these other kids that are in the same boat, you’re in the same boat, you’re in some the same age, some could be your same school district. And I think that sense I’m not by myself, I can’t really reach out and communicate with kids because I can do that and Snapchat and Instagram and all that. That’s why we’re not going to try to compete with the big boys just yet. But if we can get kids to engage with themselves first. Self-assess autonomously build a mental wellness plan, then down the road when we start building out “Brightn” maybe we’ll have a social aspect of it. I’m really hesitant to add that. I just think that adds a toxic element. And then I got to start vetting who’s talking to my kids. And I don’t know. I’m not thrilled about that yet.

“Empowering Gen-Z Mental Wellness with ‘Brightn’ App”

[00:35:15] Jake White: I’m glad you’re the one who is founding this app, because you are looking at it through the right lens of my dad’s lens. And this is the purpose of the app, then we’re gonna delineate from it to become these other things. There are other apps out there that will do that is like, you know what your lane is? Jeff, I want to say thank you for sharing “Brightn” with us, allowing people to download it for free and to test it out. Is there any other ways you want people to know to get in touch with you, or if they have ideas or anything like that?

[00:35:49] Jeff Johnston: I’d ideas, if any of your follower’s kids, people are watching this right now and they say, “Man, I’d like to see Brightn have this.” My email is Jeff@brightnapp.com. There is also a spot on the app itself that you can submit questions and stuff like that for feedback and support. I’m open to any way we can make this better. And I don’t have an agenda, I’m not selling a drug or a narrative or a success tape. I’m not selling anything on “Brightn”, other than this opportunity for kids to embrace mental wellness planning. Like they embrace anything else. And get a sense of ownership. And I think we can start to write this shift, it’s really starting to tilt. And I hate to think of the world “Brightn”, she’s only six. But I hate to think when she’s 16 or 26. If grandpa doesn’t get to work and start doing things to make her life a little bit better. What world are we going to be leaving these kids?

[00:37:00] Jake White: Well, thank you for leaving your mark on it. I’m excited to be on the journey with you. And really excited to meet you in person at how I need to you weeks. But for those of you listening, I just want to say if you haven’t been on the app yet, go ahead and check it out, see how it can be a tool that’s helpful to you and your students. And thanks for tuning in to this episode of Party talk, where we empower leaders in new drug prevention. And, Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:37:25] Jeff Johnston: Party on man.